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Mike Jempson The Challenge of an Increasingly Interdependent World - Mike Jempson Within the UK, a range of policies and legal frameworks exist which aim to combat discrimination and xenophobia. Nevertheless, according to Mike Jempson, there have been numerous examples of the negative impact certain aspects of the British press have had upon the public in relation to issues ranging from migration to European integration. In a context of financial constraints, where there the risk of decreasing coverage of the 'other', Jempson underlines the importance of political support in diversifying the national media mix. A recent study by a former BBC executive suggested that international coverage could disappear from United Kingdom (UK) terrestrial television by 2013, if production and newsroom budget cutbacks continue. "Over the past three years, a fifth of factual coverage of international issues has been moved off the mainstream channels to digital ... (where it is) seen by far fewer viewers. There is a near-universal belief among those working in television that international programmes get lower ratings and as audience ratings remain the preoccupation of most commissioners and controllers, there is a marked reluctance to commission such programming." (Harding, 2009) Both the BBC and the commercial broadcasting regulator Ofcom insist that international coverage is important but there has been no public outcry about its gradual diminution, which is bound to have a disproportionate impact on public discourse given the pervasive influence of the print and broadcast media in the UK. It may also help to explain why almost 85% of UK respondents to the Anna Lindh/Gallup Poll did not recall anything in the media that improved their perceptions of people in the Euro- Mediterranean region. The Region would generally be characterised as part of the 'Arab/Muslim world', and is most likely to appear in items about the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, about human rights violations, or in specialist documentaries and features about ancient history, archaeology and holidays. Xenophobia and Discrimination As a multicultural society with an imperial history Britain has a ready domestic market for international news, and prides itself on its tolerance and freedoms which have attracted many seeking sanctuary from injustice elsewhere. Unfortunately this reputation for 'fair play' has been besmirched by less than tolerant coverage of 'foreigners' in some sections of the popular press. In recent election campaigns the extreme right-wing British National Party (BNP) -which now has two seats in the European Parliament - capitalised on the xenophobic coverage of some mainstream national newspapers to promote the party’s racist, anti- immigration, anti-European, anti-Muslim stance. Although readership is falling year on year, almost half the population (about 30 million people) still see a national newspaper daily, and the news agenda of the nationals is often taken up by broadcasters. As 75% of readers take newspapers with a negative view of the European Union (EU), the press have been blamed for public antipathy towards Europe by the Centre for European Reform (Grant, 2006). The Times and Daily Telegraph are editorially 'eurosceptical', while four tabloid papers (with combined daily sales of seven million), delight in running stories, sometimes of dubious provenance, ridiculing EU decisions and directives. Unsurprisingly only 30% of Britons saw the EU as a good thing, and only 24% trusted its institutions according to the June 2008 Eurobarometer. But disenchantment with Europe is only one aspect of the problem. Tabloid xenophobia during the 1998 Football World Cup in France reached such a pitch that the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) had to warn editors that their right "to report on events in a robust and partisan fashion … must be balanced by responsibility. Editors should therefore seek to ensure that their reporting and their comment does nothing to incite violence, disorder or other unlawful behaviour, or to foster any form of xenophobia that could contribute directly to such incitement" (Wakeham, 1998). Later complaints about inaccurate and hostile coverage of asylum-seekers and refugees (Finney 2003; Jempson and Cookson 2004; ICAR, 2004 & 2005) forced the PCC to remind editors that: "pejorative or irrelevant reference to a person’s race, religion, or nationality is already prohibited under Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the (Editors’) Code. The Commission … has underlined the danger that inaccurate, misleading or distorted reporting may generate an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts" (Meyer, PCC, 2003). The discrimination clause of the Code of Practice, devised by editors themselves, has been controversial since publishers set up the PCC in 1991 as a self-regulatory body. It does not cover 'generalised remarks about groups or categories of people' (Beales, 2009). These remain at the editor’s discretion along with mention of a person’s nationality. In the 1970s and 80s that discretion had extended to the use of racist terms in some tabloids (Searle, 1989; Borzello, 1998) which today reserve their derision for Arabs, Muslims, Roma and 'gypsies'. Legal Constraints and Misrepresentation Britain has strong legal and institutional frameworks to combat racism and discrimination and effect social cohesion. Since 1936 a series of Public Order Acts has banned threatening, abusive or insulting language or behaviour likely to inflame racial hatred. Racial discrimination has been outlawed since the first Race Relations Act in 1965. UK print and broadcast media are bound by these laws, but the press do not have to comply with the statutory obligation of Britain’s 'public service broadcasters' (the BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, and licensed radio stations) to supply accurate, fair and impartial news and current affairs. Contemporary stereotyping of Arabs – and by extension the Muslim world -can be traced back to the oil crisis of the early 1970s, according to the Commission on British Muslims & Islamophobia (Amelia et al, 2007). The press have helped to blur distinctions between cultural and religious norms in the public eye and Islam has come to be associated with forced marriages, honour killings, homophobia, public executions and judicial amputations. The fatwah against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses and later reactions to the Danish cartoon controversy, only served to enhance perceptions of Islam as vengeful and violent. Nonetheless media coverage of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo was sympathetic to Muslims, and the British press were quick to urge readers not to condemn Islam for the atrocities of September 2001. However, 'the war on terror' has left the public in no doubt that the enemy is 'radical Islam'. To the dismay of Britain’s diverse Muslim communities, the popular news media provided platforms for obscure Islamist 'firebrands' as if they represented significant constituencies. The numerous TV documentaries which provide a more balanced portrayal of the cultural, political and historical significance of Islam, reach relatively small audiences. This may explain why the Anna Lindh/Gallup Poll reveals only a minute positive impact level of the TV news (6.3%) and documentary (6.3%) coverage. By the time of the July 2005 London bombings, tabloid scapegoating of 'outsiders' was overlaid with 'Islamophobia' -all the more insidious because the UK is home to some 1.6 million Muslims. According to the Institute of Race Relations, Islamophobic discourse across Europe, constructed and disseminated "by political parties, the media and the 'liberati' in pursuit of an assimilationist agenda", is now "the primary barrier to integration" (Fekete, 2008). As public discourse about social cohesion in the UK shifted from 'multiculturalism', acknowledging difference and celebrating of diversity to 'inter-culturalism', with its implicit message of homogenisation in which the dominant culture prevails, even those born in the UK have begun to suspect that they are regarded as 'the enemy within'. When police wrongly alleged misrepresentation against Undercover Mosque (Dispatches, C4, 2007), when it exposed the activities of extremist preachers, damages were awarded to the broadcaster, but the controversy did little to reduce tensions about what was happening within Muslim communities. Meanwhile, following concern about media mis-representation of minorities, increased hostility to Muslims and a rise in anti-Semitism, the government’s Cohesion and Faiths Unit commissioned the Society of Editors to produce guidance about accurate and fair coverage of black and ethnic minority communities. One indicative passage reads: 'Minorities carry the burden of being different. Don’t make them synonymous with things that worry everyone, like terrorism, subjugation of women, forced marriage, illegal immigration, fraudulent benefits claims and cruel animal slaughter. Few are. "It is inevitable that some negatives will be reported. All of the above will be the subject of legitimate news stories from time to time. But some sources will be melodramatic, and wary journalists will watch out for them" (Elliott, 2005). The impact of this guidance may explain why the UK press rates significantly ahead (34.7%) of the Anna Lindh/Gallup Poll average (27%) as a source of positive representation of the Euro-Mediterranean region. However, analysts have consistently criticised the negative nature of UK press coverage of both 'foreigners' and 'Muslims'.
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